https://nypost.com/2025/07/26/us-news/feds-move-to-deport-82-year-old-convicted-ira-terrorist/

A convicted terrorist and boss of the Irish Republican Army in North America may finally be getting booted from the United States.

Gabriel Megahey, 82, lived in New York for decades but a June 20 letter from the US Department of Homeland Security warned his “parole” was being terminated, nearly 30 years after he and other IRA members were given dispensation to stay in the country.

“Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately,” reads the one-page letter, which Megahey shared with the Irish Echo.

The Belfast native was convicted in 1983 in Brooklyn Federal Court for conspiring to buy missiles to shoot down British helicopters amid the violent clashes in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.”

At the time, federal authorities considered Megahey “the officer commanding (OC) of America and Canada” for the IRA, he told PBS’s Frontline.

The married father of six served five years in federal prison for conspiracy and arms shipments. 

Megahey, known by the nickname “Skinny Legs,” was convicted with three others, with then U.S. Attorney John Dearie describing him at the time as “the most culpable of these defendants,” and the group as a whole as “a network of men who sought to use this country as a base of terrorist activities,” according to reports.

“No one wants peace more than us,” Megahey, who first settled in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1975, insisted at the sentencing hearing. 

He was released from prison in 1988 — but never deported.  

Megahey and four other IRA members were then allowed to remain in the country as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the historic April 1998 accords which ended decades of violence in Ireland between those who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and those who didn’t.

Now the grandfather of 14 and great-grandfather of five, who records show moved to Delaware in 2019, is reeling after DHS warned he would be fined and criminally prosecuted if he stays in the United States.

“DHS is terminating your parole,” according to the one-page letter, which Megahey shared with the Irish Echo. “Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”  

Megahey, who relies on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for expensive medicine necessary to treat a heart ailment, also faces the loss of his benefits. 

“It would cost me $4,000 to $5,000 a month to pay for it on my own,” he told Straus News. “I can’t afford that. I’ll have to go home.”  

DHS and Megahey declined comment.

by Neitzi

20 comments

  8. Maybe a hot take, but he’s an elder, spent time in prison and has so many kids. I’d let him stay.

  9. The government won’t touch him if he ends up back in the uk, what’s the fuss about

  10. look over here! look over there! look everywhere but where you need to! this guy was *clearly* the biggest issue. for sure man.

  11. Why was this dude given parole in 1988 based on a 1998 treaty? That makes no sense.

    I get that he’s been in the states for a while, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s convicted of involvement in a terrorist organization that’s proscribed by the US federal government.

    If the feds moved to deport someone who was a member of al-Qaeda back in the 90s, nobody would bat an eye, and many would wonder why they were allowed in the country for this long. How is a former Ra man any different legally? They’re both equally terrorists in the eyes of US law.

  12. The US is only doing this to ‘disprove’ the obvious reality that only brown illegals are being sought by ICE for deportation.

  13. Let’s hope this old soak doesn’t come back to the UK. (But he probably will)

  14. There’s another article where he’s dismissive of having been an IRA leader as he shows off his massive poster honouring him as IRA Officer Commanding North America.

    Guy seems dumb as rocks.

  16. Throughout History Irish people suffered much as they struggled to create a better and more just society for themselves their families Countrymen and women and for future generations. Ireland was granted Republican status after many years of struggling and suffering living as second class Citizens for a long time throughout History… often forced to immigrate to America Australia or elsewhere because they suffered discrimination and poverty particularly in Northern Ireland. Catholic Ireland was a tragic victim and legacy of the bigotry and hatred directed at anyone who rejected the new Religion imposed upon them by the Protestant Reformation. Such rhetoric may be difficult to understand in today’s secular atheistic world …but the poverty discrimination and struggle of the Irish people was real and will always remind the a percentage of the World… especially the White Anglo Protestant world that the Irish people struggled for the right to embrace and love their culture language and religious beliefs freely and openly rather than embrace the new religion enforced upon them by powerful cruel and hateful Protestant Landlords who,with their loyalty to an alien Protestant Monarchy and a new World in which Catholics were looked down upon and subjected to ridicule scorn and loathing … how can we not admire the struggle of the Irish people who suffered so much for their right to speak their own language and worship Almighty God as their ancestors did since the Dawn of Civilisation in Ireland and throughout the World. God bless Ireland and her people. While a percentage of non Catholics around the World today and even Catholics who are ignorant of History might find it difficult to understand and empathise with the struggle of the Irish people because originally their struggle was was essentially intertwined with their deep love for the Old Religion… the Holy Catholic Church because for them and for devout Catholics around the World today… Catholicism was and still remains to be the only true foundation of real Civilisation. The Protestant world was alien to Irish Catholics…For them they only felt disdain and refused to embrace the new beliefs enforced upon them by Protestant masters …Landlords who’s ancestors had been Catholics . Such a struggle might appear to be too complicated superfluous irrelevant and hard to understand in today’s materialistic atheistic and hedonistic world in which religion particularly Catholicism sadly no longer plays a significant role in determining how people think behave and believe. Catholicism may not be as popular today as it was in times gone by …but the numbers of unborn infants being murdered daily in abortion clinics is staggering… fortunately there are still a significant percentage of devout Catholics throughout the World today who believe in The Sacredness of Human life in the Womb. Therefore the struggle of the Irish Catholic people was as much about basic survival for themselves and their offspring as much as for the struggle to protect and defend the rights of the human person in the womb and outside the womb… in other words… the struggle for the preservation of truth and therefore true and not the counterfeit flawed failing and false Civilisation crumbling around us today. Saint Padre Pio said “Pray Hope and don’t worry”.♥️💐🕊

  18. The UK should take note of how the USA deals with illegal immigration instead of fulling up hotels

  20. Trump could do us a favour and deport this piece of sh1t to Gaza. Let Israel sort him out when they’re cleaning up the rest of the terrorists.

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